Beyond Recognition (23 page)

“You like the shirt? It was a gift.”

Boldt said, “You're saying there's nothing at all to connect them to each other? It doesn't have to jump out at you; I'd take something peeking around the corner. A department store they both shopped? A gas station?”

“The wheels.”

“What?” Boldt asked.

“Has anyone worked the wheels?”

“Cars?”

“The houses were torched, right? Toast. So what was left behind?” LaMoia asked rhetorically.

“Their cars!” Boldt said, his voice rising. Investigations took several sets of eyes—that's all there was to it. Boldt had not given the victims' cars a second thought.

LaMoia shrugged. “Not that it means shit, mind you. How would I know? But I'm not seeing a hell of a lot of physical evidence to chase. The wheels kinda jumped out at me—or maybe they just peeked around the corner,” he teased.

“Check them out,” Boldt offered.

“
Moi?
And here I was thinking you'd be more interested in the ladders.” LaMoia studied his sergeant's expression.

Caught by surprise, Boldt asked, “The ladders?”

The grin was contrived, full of arrogance. “Are you feeling lucky?”

“I could use some luck.”

“Werner ladders are sold through a single distributor here, which is good for us, but they do one hell of a lot of business, and the chances of our tracing sales back to a particular buyer would typically be zilch. But we got lucky for once. The model with this particular tread pattern had a manufacturing problem with the shoes—the little things bolted to the bottom of the ladder—and the production run lasted a total of six weeks. They issued a recall, which meant this particular model only stayed in stores for a little over two weeks. The distributor can account for all but a hundred of his initial inventory.”

Boldt understood the significance of such a number. There were several hundred thousand people living in King County. LaMoia had just narrowed the field to one hundred.

The detective continued proudly. “With the one distributor it's a piece of cake to track down his retail customers: hardware stores, building supply, a couple rental shops. Count 'em! Seventeen in western Washington, but only
four
in King County. It's a high-end ladder—pun intended—the BMW of ladders, which is nice for us because they restrict the number of retailers allowed to carry them. Another thing: They're spendy things, meaning that when some Joe buys one he pays by check or credit card. Check it out: Not one of these ladders went out the door for cash. We've gotten that far already.”

“You've already talked to the retailers?” Boldt felt a surge of optimism; LaMoia had a way of making even the smallest crack of light seem blinding.

“You bet. And this no-cash thing plays well for us,” LaMoia continued. “Because all these places use computerized cash-register inventory systems, we've asked for itemized sales records. Some have been able to supply those directly to us. Others provided their cash register tapes for the couple of weeks in question.”

Boldt felt all the air go out of him. “We're supposed to go through a bunch of cash-register tapes item by item, pulling ladder sales?” he complained. He considered this a moment. “I'd say forget it, John. Too big a long shot. Abort. Too time-consuming.”

“Wait a second!” the detective objected, still wearing his trademark cocky expression. “Do you want to know who bought those ladders or not?”

“Not if it requires that kind of manpower. In the past, I might have handed off a job like that to one of the college criminology courses, let them do our dirty work, but—”

“Wait!” LaMoia repeated, interrupting. “You're not listening.”

There were few if any other detectives who could talk to Boldt that way. He crossed his arms tightly and withheld comment. LaMoia was careful about how he played his cards; he would not have been so abrasive without something to back it up.

“We've got scanners,” LaMoia said. “Handheld jobs you run over a newsprint article, or an ad, or a map you want on your desktop machine. We've got OCR—optical character recognition—software that converts printed text from a scanned graphic image to data that word processors and database programs can manipulate. We're in the fucking computer age here, Sarge. Leaves Neanderthals like you in the dust.”

“I understand scanning technology,” Boldt countered. “Not real well,” he conceded, “but the fundamentals.”

“So what we're in the process of doing is
scanning
those cash register tapes. Doesn't take long at all. When that's done, we run OCR on them, and then we can search for anything we like: Werner, the word
ladder
, the product code, the price point. Guaran-fuckin'-teed to give us a hit for every ladder sold. Every sale is accompanied by method of payment, check or credit card. The account number is right there on the tape. By this afternoon … tomorrow … day after, we'll have every sale of every ladder accounted for. We'll have a checking account or credit card number we can trace—right back to the individual buyer.” He said proudly, “I'm telling you, Sarge, we've got this guy.”

It was good work, and Boldt told him so. What he didn't bring up was that a hundred names might not get them any closer to the arsonist. They still needed the method of selection, the method of entry into the victims' homes. There were too many unanswered questions, too many loose ends. He didn't want to deflate LaMoia. They needed a decent break—perhaps the ladder was one of them, as LaMoia believed. The job of lead detective was to cast a dozen nets into the water and hope for fish in a few.

“Mind you,” LaMoia interjected, “the ladder was probably ripped off. Ten to one, that's what we find out. But from what neighborhood, when? We might get something out of it yet, Sarge. You want me to chase down the wheels, I got no problem with that. But don't drop this ladder thing. I'm telling you: I can smell it. The ladder is a good thing. It's worth going after.”

“It's good work,” Boldt repeated, though with discouragement sneaking through. “Honestly.”

“This computer stuff helps.” For the first time, LaMoia sounded tentative. “Something's gonna break, Sarge. We've got six dicks on this thing working damn near around the clock. That ups our odds significantly.”

“Get someone to look at the cars. Maybe they shopped the same convenience store, ate a burger at the same place; maybe that's how he spotted them. Maybe there's a wrapper on the floor or a receipt or something. A bag. I like the cars. I want to work the cars. But if you want the ladders this badly, John, go ahead and stay with them. We need a quick education about rocket fuel, as well. We need Bahan and Fidler to step up to the plate. An arson is another world, at least to this cop it is.”

At that moment, Daphne burst through homicide's security door, her face flushed, her chest heaving. It was a Wonder Bra again, as far as Boldt could tell. She marched over to Boldt and LaMoia with a defiant stride that at once alerted the sergeant to some kind of breakthrough. He knew that fire; he had tasted it. There wasn't a male eye in the bull pen that missed her.

She stopped in front of them, attempted to collect herself, and, filling her chest with a lungful of air, said, “Steven Garman is hiding something. He knows a hell of a lot more than he's letting on. I want to hit him, and hit him hard. I'm going to crack the son-of-a-bitch wide open.”

He was late, and terrified of the consequences.

Ben had turned and locked the door from the inside before he ever smelled the guy.

He wasn't exactly thinking about it, but his mind was registering that a house, a home, is a sacred place, with sacred sounds and sacred smells; a place of familiar sounds and familiar smells; each with its own identity. These markers represent safety and sanctuary.

That smell did not belong: sharp, salty. Not at all the sour smell of booze he had come to live with, not the smell of a girl. It was …

The smell inside the back of the camper.

At that moment of realization, a hand clutched at his shoulder and Ben screamed and took off for the stairs. The low, angry voice said something from behind him, but Ben missed all but the sensation of it, the strange tingling inside him, coupled with the palpable echo of that hand locking onto his shoulder. His reaction was born of instinct: make it to his room, lock the door, get out the window, run like hell for Emily's, never come back.

A plan. Something upon which to focus. A few years earlier he might have thought about it. But he had learned that thought slowed you down. He glanced over his shoulder. The face belonged to Nick, the driver of the pickup truck, the guy with the burned hand and the leather belt. He was faster than Ben's stepfather, sober, in better shape. “My money, you little shit!” A flood of fear ran like a hot liquid over him. He slipped on the stairs. Nick grunted, precariously close behind. For Ben, the hallway seemed to shrink, the seconds shortened. The world was a painful place, a voice inside him reminded. Panic seized his chest. No more plan, only the certainty that bad things happened to bad people and that by taking the money he had made himself a bad person, had crossed over to where little separated him from the man scrambling quickly up the stairs.

The strength in the man's one good hand was not like anything human. It strangled his left ankle, tripping him, and his chin banged on the stairs as he was dragged downward. He bit his lip, and the metallic taste of his own blood filled his mouth. He understood vividly that it would not be the last blood spilled. The man dragged him closer, the rug burning against his face. Ben reared back with his right leg and drove the sole of his sneaker into the center of his attacker's forehead. The man let go.

Ben recaptured the stairs and once again began his ascent. The suffocating fear dissipated somewhat; Ben was in his element, he knew all about escape. This was a game he understood.

As he cleared the top of the stairs, Ben heard the man right behind him. He didn't look back. He didn't scream. He hurried.

His bedroom door loomed at the end of the hall—a safe passage, freedom.

The entire house shook as the back door slammed shut. “Kid?” the familiar drunken voice called out.

Ben couldn't remember a time when that voice had sounded so good.

The footsteps behind him paused.

“
Help!
” Ben shouted. “Look out!” A few steps from sanctuary, Ben skidded to a stop. Nick was suddenly more concerned with Jack. Ben's drunken stepfather wouldn't stand a chance.

“Who the fuck are you?” Jack had reached the bottom of the stairs. “Get out of my fucking house!”

“He took my money!” the intruder shouted. “Your fucking kid's a thief.”

Ben hurried back to the top of the stairs. If his stepfather believed what he heard, Ben was dead. Nick was standing on the stairs, looking down at Ben's stepfather. A gun was tucked into the small of his back. “Dad!” Ben shouted, wondering where that word had come from. Overcome by an unexpected protective instinct, he began to slide feet first down the stairs like a runner going for home plate, undercutting the intruder, knocking him off his feet, and propelling him toward Jack, who stood there unflinchingly, numb, gazing drunkenly at the spectacle.

A fight erupted between the two men, but it was nothing like television. They rolled around on the floor in a tangle of limbs and a blur of swearing. Ben clawed for purchase as he continued to slide down the stairs, his chin banging against each step, his brain rattled. He scratched and clawed, attempting to brake, finally grabbing for the handrail.

He stopped just short of the fray. The one called Nick was pummeling his stepfather. Ben was strangely torn by the pleasure he took in such a sight.

“I … want … my … fucking … money,” the intruder said with each hit. “My fucking money!” He slapped the man with that grotesque paddle and hit hard with the opposing fist. There was blood coming from his stepfather's swollen eye.

Nick glanced hotly over his shoulder and met the boy's eyes. Ben felt his stomach go to jelly. Nick grabbed hold of Ben's shirt, which tore off in his hand as Ben jerked away. Ben screamed, stumbled back, and fell.

The intruder sprang like a cat, blocking Ben's chance at the front door. Boxing him in, he stepped closer, arms spread wide. Ben threw a lamp at the man, turned over a chair, and reached for the door of the downstairs closet, the only escape available to him. From the corner of his one good eye, Ben picked up movement to his right; his stepfather was conscious and coming to his feet, unseen by the intruder, whose full attention was fixed on the boy. The man said clearly, “I want my fucking money.”

Ben realized that by standing there he could buy his stepfather time to come up from behind. But instinct won out—he grabbed the closet doorknob and turned.

The intruder lunged for him. Ben kicked out, blindly connecting with something that cracked. The man let out a ferocious cry. Ben slipped into the darkness, yanked the door shut behind him, and held the doorknob tight. It rotated despite Ben's efforts. The door opened a crack. That burned hand, with its shiny pink skin, slipped through the crack in the door.